i knew i could weave in 15 stories of other commanding officers and get the history. now we can bring the whole history of the camp, a lot of the camps together. other cos and tell their stories. you will see their stories and names in the books. you will see the photos. and use it to become a historical narrative for some of the personal insights. -- some people wanted stories. that wasn't the purpose. it was to show respect and to tell the story. and a little bit about the military supports the presidency around the world 24/7. >> thank you so much, mike, for joing us on white house history live. this has been a really comprehensive conversation. thank you to all the viewers for watching this. >> c-span's american history tv

continues now. you can find the full schedule for the weekend on your program guide, or at c-span.org slash history. >> good evening, everybody, and welcome to tonight's lecture on fly girls. what a pleasure it is to welcome a live audience once again to the auditorium. [applause] for the first time in almost two years. and those of you who are joining the program for first time tonight, welcome to you as well. change i need not say it's about to change, but, i currently just offer the remaining programs this year, both in person and via our lives. you can also consult our website for updates

concerning the venue. our sponsor for this evening's program is one of our oldest, jasper's village who have been with us for many years and who we are extremely grateful to for considering their genuine support. that might be a good time to encourage any of you who might be so inclined to make a contribution as the continuation of the program depends on this kind of individual and corporate support. you can do this by once again going to our website for information on how you may contribute. our speaker this evening is keith o'brien, author of fly girls, subtitled how five daring women defied all odds and made aviation history. keith was born in cincinnati and graduated from northwestern university, he is a former staff writer for both the boston globe and the new orleans times. as a newspaper reporter he won multiple for meritorious journalism. he is also written for the new york

times, the new york times magazine, washington post, politico, slate, and esquire, among others. he has spoken on national public radio for more than a decade including on programs such as npr's all things considered. morning addition and we can addition. he has written two books, the most recent of which is the aforementioned fly girls. with a third scheduled for publication this april. titled paradise falls, the true story of environmental catastrophe. fly girls has received widespread acclaim including two assessments that i mentioned from authors who have spoken previously in great lives. you may remember them. one is jonathan ive who said of that book, quote, if you liked the boys in the boat or unbroken, i suspect most everybody did like them. you will love fly girls. this story carefully researched and expertly written, offers an

irresistible cast of characters and high octane drama. karen abbott, who was also speaking last, offered a similarly glowing evaluation writing quote this is more than history. it is a powerful story for our times. it has it all. adventure, tragedy, and heroes who overcame cruel prejudice to rule the air. fly girls reads like a heart stopping novel. but this story is all true. in the really inspiring. some of you may remember that keith was originally scheduled as part of the 2020 great lives series but that talk was canceled because of the pandemic. we have look forward to having him two years now. so it's a special pleasure tonight to finally welcome to the great lives podium, keith o'brien. [applause]

>> thank you, doctor crowley, for that introduction. i really appreciate it. you did have two years to work on it, though. and i want to say, thank you to all of you for coming out tonight, thank you to the university of washington, thanks to the great lives lecture series and thanks to allie huber who works here at the university for two years. we've been trying to make this night work, it was on and there was off. and then it was on and it was off. as recently for me anyways, recently as yesterday. i thought this event was going to be livestreamed. i was told we would not have a crowd tonight and i would just be standing behind this podium in this beautiful room all by myself. and the in these times we've all had to learn how to adapt. and learn how to roll with the punches. the storm

might close early, the restaurant might not be open. our cereal that we like might not be available. so i was willing to do whatever it took to make this event happen. but of course, it was a little upsetting, a little depressing a disappointing that i was coming here to fredericksburg, a city that i have been to before and do really enjoy. and i was going to be in this empty room i said to my wife, i said yesterday before i got on the plane should, i even bring my shoes. should i even plan to wear pants up there? it's fortunate really for all of us that my wife told me, yes. so it's really great to be here. and i'm going to be speaking tonight about my book and really excited to finally share it with you. but before we get into that i want to start with a confession. of sorts. and

that is i don't really like to fly. i don't like turbulence. i don't like the little sounds that a plane makes for seemingly inexplicable reasons in the middle of a flight. and i really don't like takeoff. that moment where your barreling down the runway. so fast that as you take off into the air you can feel the weight of the air in the plane on your as you move further and further away on the ground. i really don't like that feeling at all. now i do like to travel for pleasure in normal times. and i do travel for work. so not flying for me is not an option. which means that from time to time, you will find me in the 29th row of coach, white knuckling the armrests as if i alone am holding up the plane. a few years ago, i was on a

flight like that. i was flying from new orleans to chicago on a hot summer night. and it was one of those flights where the pilot comes on before you even take off. and he said folks, it's going to be a bad flight. and he was right. you know, in the middle of that night, in the summer storm. there we were, bouncing around in the sky. and there i am trying to curl up into a tiny ball in my seat. but resisting the urge to do that because that would be an insane thing for a grown person to do on a plane. the woman next to me, she totally noticed. and she finally couldn't take it anymore and she turned to me and she said, honey, i think i can help you. i have xanax.. that's a true story. that is me as a flyer. and it sort of begs the question why someone like this, someone like me would spend two and a half years researching

and writing about planes at a time when plane travel was exponentially more dangerous than it is today. why would i do that myself? why? and the answer is really that it has nothing to do with planes. i was drawn to the story that ultimately became a fly girls because it is the story of an epic quest. populated by characters who are willing to risk everything for the thing they loved. who would face a diversity after diversity. and entrenched discrimination in the death of their friends. and still they would keep flying, still they would keep going, only to triumph over the men in 1936 in one of the most epic air races of them all. that's the story i would hope anyone would want to tell and it's certainly one i am excited to

share with you here tonight. so whenever i'm writing, whether it's for magazines, radio or four books. i like to think about my stories in terms of scenes, in terms of moments. identify early on what are the most important moments here. and then build around those. and so i thought i begin tonight with you, with a moment. i want you to imagine september 1933. the winning days of summer, labor day weekend in chicago. the city had been struggling in the gross of the great depression at that 0. 4 years. record unemployment, red lines down the street. lob houses, as they were known at the time. so filled with people that he would sleep on your shoes so that someone else would not seal them. but that weekend, labor day weekend, chicago 1923, was going to be different. the

city was preparing for a crush of visitors, 500,000 people streaming in by a rail car and automobile. they were coming for an exciting event. they were coming for the air races. we need to forget about what we know about modern day air shows. you know, those scripted flying events with the world's most modern planes. air racing in the 1920s and 30s, this is the real sport. with winners and losers, enormous crowds and jackpots of money for the victories. in this little window of time or my story takes place between 1927 and 1936, air racing was one of the most popular sports in america. it was baseball, it was boxing, it was horse racing and it was air racing. and it was just definitively also the most dangerous. inevitably, pilots

flying at a high rate of speed low to the ground would crash. and these pilots would sometimes die right in front of the grandstands. and i want to make clear that it wasn't just air racing that was considered dangerous or dubious of the time, it was flying itself. for my book, i did a ton of research of course and read a lot of news coverage from the 1920s and 30s. in one of these stories, it was an exposé in the chicago tribune. of what they termed wildcat flight schools. these were flight schools in the chicagoland area in 1927. where one could get a pilots license in a matter of 90 minutes. and that summer in

chicago, the chicago tribune ran a series of stories about this problem, this obvious problem. and there was one line in the story that really jumped out of me and i wanted to share it with you now. it said, officials feel such schools should furnish one or more coffins with each diploma. this was 1927. in chicago. this is how people felt about flying. so because of these risks, because of these dangers, because of the crowds at the races, because the money involved, because of the stakes. many men believed that air racing and indeed of flying was no place for a woman. it's sexist, of course, in obviously wrong. but at the time, at the time women were banned from doing all sorts of things. from waiting tables after 10 pm,

from working at the factory, from working night shifts. on the east coast, the united states in the late 19 20s, women were banned from driving taxicabs in every single major american city. and if you were a married woman, in particular if you were a married teacher, school teacher, it was even harder for you. if you were a single female teacher in the late 19 20s in america, right here in virginia, perhaps even right here in fredericksburg. and you had the audacity to and you had the audacity to decide over the course of that school year to get married, at the end of the year or your local school board or superintendent

almost always men. would force you to resign from your job at the school. because it was believed by these men that a woman couldn't handle the rigors of teaching our children all day, only to go home to raise her own. so women are denied access to jobs. women are denied basic rights. and they were denied other basic things to. you know in the late 1920s, when my story begins, there was a major tragedy in washington d. c.. a theater roof collapsed under a heavy weight of a blizzard snowfall. and it was a national news, it was a real calamity. many people died. including a young boy. and the boys mother wish to sue the theater company for

negligence. a case she likely would've won. but laws denied her that right. only a father, only a father had the right to sue in the wrongful death of a minor child at the time. and this boy's father was already dead. meaning the mother in question had no husband, no child and no recourse. women hoping to fly planes in the late 1920s faced similar challenges. you know, in the presidential election of 1928, there were 29 million women who were eligible to vote. 29 million women of voting age. out of that number, 29 million fewer than a dozen, fewer than 12 had a pilots license on file

at the u.s. department of commerce. which was the regulating agency at the time, the faa of its era. and, that really made a few women who did fly planes real renegades, true radicals, the kind of radical that is almost hard to imagine today. in september 1933, labor day weekend in chicago, one of those women was about to do one of the most radical thing of all, she was going to race her plane against the man. whipping around pylons placed in a triangular course in the airfield, 50 foot towers. she was 29 years old, this woman. divorced, and afraid of nothing. her plane that day was so fast as to known to be dangerous. this model of plane had killed many man before. she knew what she was doing, she knew how to fly, and as she reached the home pylon that labor day, just at sundown,

right in front of the grandstand, the crowd knew it too. screaming into that pylon at 229 miles an hour, roughly 50 or 60 feet off the ground, she banked that plane so hard, so perfectly around the tower that it stood up on its wing. just look at that girl, the announcer said. those were his words. just look at that girl, have you ever seen such a beautiful race? she was trailing the two leaders but she was in third place, she was right there. and then, on the eighth turn, at the home pylon, a problem. the right wing of her speedy plane began to disintegrate midflight. this wing made out of spruce and linen began to fall apart and flutter to the ground like so much confetti. and, with the wind now whistling through the holes in her wing, the woman in the cockpit did exactly as she was supposed to do. she peeled off course, away from her fellow competitors, and the crowd. south towards the city of chicago, out over glenview road and lake avenue. she was trying to save the people on the ground, and she was

struggling to gain altitude to save herself. everyone at the airfield in chicago was watching her little red plane in the sky, knowing one of two things was about to happen. she was going to bail out from a dangerously low altitude, or she was going to crash. either way, it probably was not going to end well. that woman's name was florence klingensmith, you see her here, pictured with

amelia earhart one year earlier in 1932. after florence won the first ever all-female speed air race, the amelia earhart trophy. you probably have not heard of florence klingensmith, most people have not. when we think about women in aviation in the 1920s and 30s, when tend to think about one or two women. betsy coleman, the first black female aviator in this country, and the only one who died in a plane crash in florida in 1926. or, of course, amelia earhart. and, when we think about amelia we like to think of her all alone, alone in that plane over the ocean, alone flying into those cultural headwinds, but, at the time amelia was flying, other women were flying with her. each of them was brave, each of them was bold, some of them, objectively were perhaps more talented in a cockpit than amelia. today we have forgotten almost everything about them.

their battles, their losses, their friendships, the rivalries, what they fought for, how hard they fought. we have also forgotten that seemingly impossible victory over the man in 1936. with this book, with fly girls i set out to change that. reminding readers of this time and these characters. women who stood up for themselves and each other again and again. defiant in the face of roles that were intended to keep them in their place. and, also, confident in the knowledge of who they were. i want to be very clear, here, this is not intended to be a comprehensive history of women in aviation in the 1920s and 30s, the sort of textbook history where each woman gets her own chapter, this is not that kind of book at all. if you want to write that kind of textbook history and women in aviation at that time, you would have 25 or 30 chapters. my story is a narrative about a group of friends. amelia earhart, and her friends. and,

i would like to introduce you to them now. ruth elder, was 24 years old in the summer of 1927. already on her second marriage and living in lakeland, florida, where she was answering phones at a dentist office. it was not the life that she had imagined for herself growing up in anniston, alabama. she was obviously a beautiful woman but she also had an electric personality, a certain charisma about her. to be frank, she was bored in the dentist office. and so, in the summer of 1927 ruth elder crafted a bold plan, she knew how to fly a plane and she decided she wanted to be the first woman to ever fly across the atlantic ocean. she was

inspired, of course, by charles lindbergh, that spring, may 1927 lindbergh had flown the ocean and arrived in his now famous spirit of st. louis on long island, roosevelt field that may. i want to be clear, lindbergh was not exactly flying for the pioneering spirit of it all, he was flying for a jackpot of money. $25, 000, about a quarter of 1 million dollars in today's money had been put up for the first man, and it was believed it would be a man, it would fly nonstop from new york to paris, paris to new york. many man had tried to win that prize and failed in spectacular fashion before lindbergh arrived in new york that may. these men crashed on runways, planes loaded down with too much fuel. they burned up in infernos right there on the airfield. or they disappeared over the ocean, never to be found or heard from again. lindbergh himself nearly crashed on takeoff in may 1927.

it had rained all night in long island, his fellow competitors who were also trying to win this prize decided not to fly that day, lindbergh's plane that was quite small sank into the clay runway as it eased out onto it that morning. they set up a flag about three quarters of the way down and told lindbergh if he was not off the ground by the time he reach that flag, he needed to abort. lindbergh reached that flag, still on the ground, and kept going, flying straight into a crowd of about 500 people who, inexplicably, had gathered at the end of the runway.

lindbergh screaming towards that crowd, barely gets off the ground before he reaches them. he is so low to the ground at that moment that the people who are standing there could see his face through the cockpit glass. they would tell the new york times the next day that the young man was suddenly aged by worry. lindbergh was worried because he was flying directly into a wall of trees, which he narrowly missed, flipping through an open hole in the canopy and then disappearing into the morning mist, not to be heard from again for 33 and a half hours. which is how long it took to fly across the ocean in 1927 in a single engine plane. i do not think i'm going to ruin the story for you by telling you lindbergh will make

it. he will, and when he does he is going to win that 25,000 dollar prize, he is going to win a book deal, and all of the frame that comes with it. he is going to fly back to america and then take that spirit of st. louis around the country that summer and fall, 92 cities in all, a goodwill tour that stretched across america. it was in this moment of the post lindbergh afterglow that air fever was born. that is what they call it, air fever. it had a surprising side of it, women i want to fly across the ocean. unlike lindbergh and the men they were willing to do it for free. ruth elder will leave five months later in this plane right here, in october 1927. it was a bright red plane with yellow lettering down the side

in a cursive script that you can sort of made out. the plane was aptly called the american girl. this plane was 32 feet from nose to tail the 46 feet across the wing. obviously a single engine airplane with a top speed of 105 miles an hour. just for reference when you are barreling down the runway to take a flight, you are already going 105 miles an hour. this plane had no radio, no way for ruth elder to contact the outside world. have for this flight in october she would earn headlines on two continents and become, by the end of 1927, arguably the most famous woman in the world. before the flight with her copilot, ruth elder would also

pay a very awful personal price. amelia earhart is a social worker from boston who comes next. in our quest to remember earhart or to remember the history of how she disappeared, we seem to have forgotten almost everything about how she actually lived. the fact of the matter is in 1927 and 1928, amelia earhart was not a famous pilot. she was a licensed pilot, but, by her own admission she was not doing much flying anymore. she was working at a settlement house on tyler street in boston. what people in boston now call china town. she was helping new immigrants to this country learn how to speak english, learn how to get a job. it was here, at the settlement house in 1928, 6 months after ruth elder's flight that the connecting east coast businessman would discover her.

including her future husband george putnam of platinum publishing. they would put amelia earhart on a sea plane sitting in boston harbour, flown by a man, a plane that was going to be going across the atlantic. now, on this first flight amelia had no job but to sit behind the two men who are at the controls and take notes. for a book that she would write for george putnam if they made it, if they survived, of course they do. the sea plane lands safely in the water off the coast of wales in june 1928, by the time they open the door of that plane and amelia steps out she has already become one of the most famous women in the world. but, to her enduring credit amelia knew that what she had done on that flight was really

nothing. as she would say that summer, i was just a sack of potatoes on that plane. i was cargo. she would spend the rest of would be a very short life just nine years in the spotlight. making bold flights in an answer to her critics. it would surprise us to think about it now but even amelia earhart had critics. ruth nichols was a daughter of wall street wealth, born on the upper east side of new york and raised in tony westchester county. and, more than any other woman it is really ruth nichols who will challenge immediate air court for most accomplished female aviator in this time in the 1920s and 30s. for ruth it is a journey that really begins when she is just a young girl. not much older than the students right here on

the campus at mary washington. when she graduates from high school in 1918 her parents want her to get married, they want her to marry well. so that the story of her marriage might appear in the new york times. but the first bold decision that ruth nichols makes for herself is that she's not going to do that. and she defies her parents wishes and instead, she goes to college. this is ruth nichols graduation photograph. 1924. at wellesley college in massachusetts. a school for women that of course, still exist today. and it was here at wellesley that ruth nichols decided not only did she want to choose her own path, not only did she want to live her own life, she wanted to fly planes. and in 1930, she would acquire this plane here. this was a lockheed vega, undeniably

the fastest, most modern plane of its time. she named it the akilah. and had borrowed it from a businessman that some of you may recognize, his name was powell crosley. the owner of the -- within a matter of months, ruth nichols was flying this plane into the record books. she quickly had the altitude record. the transcontinental speed record. the short land speed record. and in june 1931, she will attempt to fly this plane right here. over the ocean. trying to be the first woman all alone at the controls of an aircraft flying over the atlantic. it's worth pointing out, this is one year, a full year before amelia earhart whatever dare to make such a flight. and were it not for happenstance and bad luck,

the kind of happenstance and bad luck that dogged flyers in these days, ruth nichols might have made it. and if she had, it may be she who you remember today. and not amelia. florence klingensmith who i mentioned before was the daughter of a farmer in northern minnesota. raised on a plot of land just across the river from fargo, north dakota. and just like ruth elder in 1927, florence was not satisfied with her lot in life. she wasn't doing anything exciting. she was working at a dry cleaners in downtown fargo, searching and pressing shirts. what is she really wanted to do was fly planes. but like a lot of us in life, she had no clear and obvious path to her dreams. her parents had no money, no connections in this nascent world of aviation. and so,

florence did the only thing she could do. she enrolled in mechanic school at what is now modern-day hector field. the airport in fargo for those of you who have been there. she was one woman out of 400 men learning to build and fix airplane engines. and it was here at hector field that a young florence began to press for case to connect to businessmen in fargo. she wanted one of them to help her learn how to fly and help her by her own plane. finally, one man relented and he said if you're willing to risk your neck, i'm willing to risk my money. and he gave her $3,000 to buy a plane. and florence, to, was quickly flying into the record books. you know, her special skill was air racing. that act of whipping a plane around pylons placed on a course in a city or at an airfield. it was an incredibly

difficult thing to do. a skill that would require these above your left and your right hand, your left and your right foot. n chicago at labor day and as you work the throttle and the flaps to get yourself around those pylons at a high rate of speed. and the reason why she was invited to race the men and chicago at labor day 1933 is that she had proven herself to be one of the most talented error racers in america both man or woman. and for her flight that day in chicago, it would really change life for women both in the air and on the ground. and finally, there is louise thaden. louise, to me, is the rarest kind of flyer in these days. she wasn't just a woman who flew and race planes. but louise was a mother. she had her first child, a son, in 1930. and her second

child, a daughter, in 1933. and at a time when culture and society and indeed, many husbands, expected their wives to stay home and raise children. louise did a very modern thing. she wanted to have it all. she believed she could juggle her responsibilities at home and her love for her children. with her personal goals and ambitions. in it really is only because of the sacrifices that louise made in this little window of time that we wrongly erased her from this picture. and this story. so now that i introduce you to them individually, i want to say a few things about them collectively. and then i'll be happy to take any questions you might have. i want to talk to

you about who they were, what they overcame and why they still matter today. because they do. we simply cannot overstate how dominated aviation was by man. in particular, white men in the 19 20s and 30s. planes were built by man for man. these planes were often too large for most women. in fact, many of my character is in my book would have to modify the cockpits with padding and pillows just so they could reach the petals or the controls. and when these women flew across the country, transcontinental, as they all did. and a stop to refuel in wichita or st. louis or kansas city, they would walk inside these primitive airfield buildings and find there was only one kind of restroom. it

was a men's room. and when the modern era races began, in the summer of 1928. the women were not invited to compete. there was first erases were put on by this man here. his name was cliff henderson. he was an incredible salesman, a car salesman in los angeles. and he decided to stage the first modern national air races that summer in this beam and partly field just south of downtown l. a.. by the way, we know this been and broadly feel today by three letters. that is l. a. x.. for these erases, cliff henderson wanted amelia earhart to come and louise thaden to

come and the others. and indeed, amelia and louise were there. but they were not invited to race. they were not invited to compete. indeed, the only job for women at those for us national air races was to hand out the trophies to the men if they so chose to do that. probably wouldn't surprise you to know that these conditions did in sit well with the female aviators of this era. in particular, the three here. amelia earhart and ruth nichols and louise thaden. they were really the triumvirate of this

time. and they quickly realized that they could compete against one another in the sky. they could try to fight one another across the ocean. indeed, amelia and ruth nichols lied to one another about their transatlantic plans both of them didn't want the other want to know what they were hoping to do. each of them understood that the first woman to cross the ocean so low in the plane would have that key to the room of immortality. but on the ground, they recognized right away that they had to stick together. and indeed, they would become good friends. because who could understand ruth nichols better then amelia earhart? or louise faith and better than ruth nichols? i've often thought about louise in the early 1930s in what it would've been like to drop your kids off at kindergarten and preschool. how little she would've had in common with the other mothers there. and so they did become really close. and i found a lot of evidence of that in my research. you know, in 1932 amelia of course

will fly the atlantic solo. and in 1935, she wants to add the match said to that record. she wants to fly the pacific solo. flying from honolulu to oakland, california. now this is a flight some of you might have made. of course, a very common play today. but at the time, flying a single engine plane all alone across that stretch of ocean was very dangerous. indeed, many men had gone missing over that stretch, never to be found again. and aviation officials give amelia about a 50/50 chance of making it. she does, of course. and when she lands at oakland, 10,000 people are waiting at the airfield, having waited all night, not knowing when she might arrive. not knowing her timeline or her itinerary. no one was live tweeting anything at the time. win if she does land, amelia receives accolades from around the world. but not from her friend, louise thaden. that week, louise who is back home in arkansas, writes amelia a letter. and louise, had a very specific kind of way of speaking. a sort of folksy charm about her. and spoke with a little bit of a country twang. and she told amelia in this letter, and i'm quoting here. she said, don your hide, i could speak your pants. someday you, have to tell me why you do things like this. in this letter, luis goes on to tell her friend amelia that she

wished amelia would rest on her laurels. and then very prophetic ali, louise tells her you're worth more alive than dead. this is, of course, two and a half years before amelia will go missing in another very dangerous ocean flight. and you know, the same was true of amelia and ruth nichols. they had a bit more complicated friendship. maybe each of us had this kind of friendship in our lives. where we understand someone and we appreciate them but we're also sort of competing against them all the time. that was ruth and amelia. and yet, i found evidence of their closeness to. that summer, 1935, after amelia has flown at the pacific ocean, ruth nichols has a terrible crash. in upstate new york. not in a race, not anything fantastic. just on a flight. the kind of flight someone down in those days. and then the next day's papers, across the country, from phase news says that ruth nichols is in critical condition. and might not survive. at the time, amelia really is at the peak of her fame. and her husband than george putnam's keeping her out on the speaking frail, day after day after day. and when ruth crashes, amelia on the road in michigan. but she took

time away from whatever speaking engagement she had that day. amelia did. and she went down to the western union office and she wrote ruth nichols a telegram. and it's not really what's she says in the telegram but how she says it. for starters, amelia doesn't refer to ruth by her name. she calls her by her nickname, she calls her rufus. she says, dear rufus, we can't bear to have you on the sidelines for long. get well soon. a easy. and it clearly meant a lot to ruth nichols. because she saved it her entire life. until i found the telegram. in a windowless cinder block storage room filled with old dusty air race trophy at a regional airport in cleveland, ohio. where that

letter in all of ruth nichols papers had been sitting she says, dear rufus, we can't bear to have you on the sidelines for long. get well soon. a e. and it clearly meant a lot to ruth nichols. because she saved it her entire life. until i found the telegram. in a windowless cinder block storage room filled with old dusty air race trophy at a regional airport in cleveland, ohio.

where that letter in all of ruth nichols papers had been sitting unnoticed for decades. so they overcome much. they are good friends. and they really will change the world. some of you have probably heard of the women's air service pilots. the wasps. those 1000 women who flew airplanes during world war ii for the military. not in combat but from factory to bases. the wasps from time to time are in the news these days. because the last of them sadly are dying off. were it not for these women here, the wasps never come to be. if these women had accepted the

rules that were stacked against them, if they had accepted their lot in life, if they had listened to what the men wanted them to do. there would've been no platform for which the women could've argued to fly in the military during world war ii. and i really do believe that every female pilot that comes after really stands on their shoulders. and yet, there are still challenges in great deficits today. in america today, just 7% of licensed pilots are women. and when you go to airlines, major airlines, that number gets even lower. it's just 2%. in fact, some airlines have even fewer than that. now, we could have a long conversation about why that might be. i do think there are many factors in play. but one undeniable factor is the entrenched discrimination that women faced in aviation. not

just in the 20s and 30s but for the bulk of the 20th century. at the time my story takes place, the first woman was hired at an airline. to fly as a pilot. her name is helen richie. she was from mickey's port pennsylvania. and it did not go well for helen. this airline now defunct was called central air. and by rule at central air, you had to be a union pilot in order to fly. but the all men in that union would not admit her. so helena richie is hired at central air to do a job because she's good at doing a job. and then told she can't do that job. and after about ten months, she quit. because she wasn't doing anything. and as a journalist and as an author, as a

historian. you are always asking yourself questions. and one of the questions i had. when i learned the story of helen richie was, when was the next woman hired as a pilot at an airline? and i was stunned to learn that it would be 39 more years. 1973. until women were hired at an airline again. that summer, 1973, frontier air hired a woman. it was still a very small regional airline at the time. when american airlines hired this woman here. she was 24 years old. from florida. a pilots daughter. she had been struggling for years to get hired at any kind of flying outfit. cargo or

passenger. and she had failed. some airlines that still exist today denied her and told her don't bother applying again, we don't hire women. but she persisted. in the summer of 1973, american airlines hired her to be a pilot. in a grand ceremony that august, the president american airlines pinned the wings on the lapel of that jacket right there, the first ever airline pilot jacket tailored specifically for a woman. and still, she faced adversity. snide remarks from her colleagues. insulting remarks from passengers. at times in the 1970s, when a man would get on a plane and see a woman in the cockpit, he would refuse to fly. and instead of removing the male passenger from the plane, the airlines

sometimes removed the female pilot from the cockpit. and perhaps most surprisingly, at least to me, she faces snide and insulting remarks from the press. the same press that at times had dogged my flyers back in the 1920s and 30s. i mentioned that ceremony that summer with the president american airlines pin the wings on the lapel of that jacket. american airlines made a big deal out of that event. as they should have. they invited all the national media to come. and that weekend, los angeles times, the los angeles times, one of our most prestigious papers. both then and now. ran a little feature story about this woman. and it ran under a very unfortunate headline. you know, when i was told about this

headline, i thought it couldn't be real. it had to be one of those things that have been embellished and exaggerated overtime. that's the beautiful thing about micro film. newspaper micro film. it never goes away. and because i knew when the woman had been hired, and because i knew when the ceremony had taken place, it took me all of about five minutes to find this headline. it's a headline that's memorable for all the wrong reasons. and you know who are members of the most? the pilot herself. for 20 years, she flew at american. rising up the ranks of seniority, year after year. one pilot by one. until she was flying those coveted ocean routes that ruth nichols

and amelia earhart had once longed to fly. flying from new york to the bahamas, new york to paris. her name is bonnie caputo. she's still alive today. she's a grandmother and mother in new york city. i've obviously had the pleasure and honor of meeting her. since this book came out. indeed i've had the honor of meeting so many bold women and in fact pilots from the ages of 9 to 92. and this book really still inspires me in many ways. and i want to close with a few reasons why. for starters, in a sort of backwards kind of way, fly girls and this story inspired my next book. which dr. crowley mentioned is coming out this april. it's called paradise falls. and it has nothing to do with aviation.

you know, as i came out of the fly girls project, one thing that really bothered me was that some of those women, including louise thaden, lived long lives. into the 1970s. some of them into the 19 80s. and no one had found them. no writer, no author, no journalist to track them down. to talk to them about their days flying in the early moments of aviation. it was really sort of crushing, actually. to see that. there's a columbia university new york, there's a very large troth of oral histories. it's an incredible resource for historians, academics and others. and there is a very large collection of aviation

oral histories there. but almost none of them were with the women who flew in this time. and so, as i came out of fly girls, i thought to myself, what are the stories that are around us right now? populated by people who had once done something great. and are still with us but may not be for so much longer. and that brought me in around about way to a story some of you may remember, the story of love canal. a chemical landfill in the city of niagara falls around which an entire desirable lower middle class neighborhood of starter homes have been built in the 19 50s and 60s and 70s. this was a desirable place to live at the time. it had a school, and a playground. right in the heart of it. but as some of you know, the chemicals inside that old canal just underneath that school and

playground began to seep out in the late 1970s. ultimately alarming people in the neighborhood and leading to fundamental changes in our environmental policy in this country. in this one at a time between 1978 in 1980, everything would change about how we thought about our own backyards. how we thought about the environment. how we talk about the modern chemicals that we used inside our houses. and it's really a story of resistance primarily of ordinary every day stay at home moms or as they were called at the time, housewives. these women who were not active, not really active or radicalized in any way before this began to fight to escape their own homes. and in the matter of two years, went from being ignored by the local officials of

niagara falls to having the ear of jimmy carter and the white house and the national media. that book is coming out in april. i wrote it, by the way, in the thick of the lockdown pandemic. with both my kids inside my house. so it was of course the hardest thing i've ever done. and if you want, i'm sure you can preorder it through the bookstore that's here this evening. or the website, through any number of booksellers everywhere. so fly girls really did in a great way inspire this story. i've also been inspired by the fact that we've adapted the story of fly girls into a young readers book. taken this story, condensed it by about half and then i wrote it for kids

roughly 8 to 12 years old. and when i talk about this, people often ask me. what do you think young girls should take away from flying girls? and my first answer the question is i hope it's not just young girls reading it. i hope boys are reading it too. and i say that as the father of boys. boys also need to understand that a woman can be just as bold, just as brave, just as strong as they are if not more so. and it's had an incredible impact on kids that i've met through the course of this book. kids turning their front sidewalks into chalk art for fly girls. kids decorating their books with hearts. boys and girls reading it. and once in the spring of 2019, in those gilded pre-pandemic days, i received

an email from a mom. just outside of boston, massachusetts. and she had told me that she had a daughter who was a middle school girl. and her middle school, like a lot of middle schools, was doing a wax museum. we're each child had to dress up as a real character from the past and write some kind of report about him or her. and you know, this is a very common activity at lots of middle schools. elementary schools. and usually, there's a list of people that the kids can choose from, often categorized by sports or politics or revolutionary war. and when you get two women in aviation, they usually only offer one woman. amelia earhart. but this girl had read my book. and she informed her teachers that she didn't want to dress up as amelia heard. she wanted to go as ruth nichols. and this mother was

reaching out to say, do you have any photos or artifacts or letters that you can share with my daughter, sarah, so that she can do a report? and so, of course, i was very excited and i sent her what i could. and i asked her when this wax museum was going to be. and she told me the date. and by total luck, i was doing an event that very day at wellesley college. which was a mere 15 minute drive from the girl's school. and so of course, i had to. i popped in just to say hello to the new ruth nichols. am i really do think about these women. a good bit, actually. and always when i fly. and i think a lot about ruth nichols. you'll see here on her pilots license from 1930,

it's signed, of course by orville wright. and this book first came out, i was in new york city for the launch for the first day. i had a busy day. that morning wasn't scheduled. and so i decided to do something that morning that i had never had a chance to do during the actual research for the book. that is i left my hotel in manhattan and i got on a train and i went to the bronx to visit ruth nichols grave. she is buried in a place called wood lawn cemetery which is a massive and important cemetery in new york city. you know, if you are of money or of fame in the 19th or 20th centuries and you lived in new york, chances are, you are buried at wood lawn. and so i took the train

up there, i went to the front office there at wood lawn. because we need to go there, you are supposed to check in. and i told him who i was there to see. and they gave me a map and on this map there are little icons for all the famous people who were buried at wood lawn. i looked at and i quickly realized, there was no icon for ruth nichols so i told them who i was looking for. and with the help of the associate there in and app they had me download onto my phone. we triangulated where she was. and off i went on foot on this hot summer morning into the cemetery. when i got to the place where the told me ruth nichols grave was, it was clearly wrong. i couldn't find her. so using the app and the map, i sort of had

to start over and walk 15 minutes in a different direction. and finally, i did find her grave. you know, at woodlawn, there are ornate tombs and mausoleums built by people who wanted us to know they were important. but when i got to ruth nichols's grave, it was just a simple tombstone. waist high, the kind of stone that maybe one day we might be buried under. and there were just a few words on it. it had her date of birth, her date of death and then down there at the bottom, just three words. it said beloved by all. and it really stopped me because she was loved by all. and they were all beloved by all. and i do hope that they will be again. and i want to thank you so much

for listening to me tonight. thank you for your attention. thank you for coming out into the real world. i'd be happy to take any questions y'all might have. [applause] >> thank you, keith. so we'll take some questions from the audience if you have some. if you raise your hand, kelly will seek you out. and guess who has a question? if it's not bill mott. one of our regulars. bill, good to see you back. all the rest of you as well. bill. >> my question has to do with how the women aviators received support. you indicated you had five of their, ten of them there. you said one lady wanted to fly and so she goes to this

man who had money. he gave her money to buy the airplane. so is that the way it worked for all the others, did all the other women do that? go to a rich man to get money to do that? second part. what if they had been 24 or 36 or 48 women who want to fly? would they have been able to receive support? >> so, yeah, i mean -- almost everybody, men and women who wanted to fly in the 1920s and 30s received support of some kind. remember, this is the great depression. people couldn't just go down the street, typically and buy a plane. some men built their planes themselves. in fact, some of the great air racers of the time actually built planes in their garage and then would

fly them at 250 miles an hour. it was really the sort of the wild west of aviation. and so yes, every woman during this early time received some kind of support. amelia received a ton of support. starters from her husband, george platinum. but also from many different investors who helped her biplanes over the years. louise thaden got her first break selling planes for a man in kansas by the name of beach. beach craft. in every plane that she ever flew in the air races was a beach made plain. and so yes, they all did receive some kind of support but really, it was, it's not all that different from a nascar driver today receiving support from his or her sponsors. it was just i could

be incredibly difficult to purchase and have your own nascar vehicle. it was incredibly difficult and expensive to have your own airplane in 1932. well, there were. like i said, so, in 1928, as i said, there were fewer than a dozen license pilots. but by the end of the 1930s, there were about 117. sorry, and 1920s, by 1930. about 117 women. who were licensing this country. and at the end of that year, or december 1929, these women in my book, many of them, louise and amelia included. they met on long island to discuss should they form some kind of group. some kind of advocacy group for these hundred and 17 women. and they sent out letters to every single one of them across the country. and they receive responses of yes from 99 of them. and so they dubbed themselves the 99. and that

organization for fema flyers is still in existence today. >> other questions? kelly, back there? >> i was intrigued by or talking about finding the archive of one of the flyers in a small museum in ohio. so when you decided to write this book, did you have the five in mind at the beginning or did you say i want to write about female aviators in the early history of aviation. and for your research, finding some of the five that i was able to research and get good information about. so how does the information of of the topic play out as you write the book? >> so i actually discovered this story in a very accidental way. in the spring of 2016, i was flying from boston to pittsburgh for a story i was doing at the time for politico magazine about the unlikely possibility of donald trump

carrying the state of pennsylvania that fall. and for the flight, i grabbed a book that had been sitting on a bedside stand for sometime which is where my to be red pile typically piles up. and this is a book some of you may have heard of. it's called the astronaut wives club. by really couple. it's a nonfiction narrative of the wives of the mercury seven astronauts. so john cline's wife, alan shepard's wife and one of my favorite books of all-time is tom wolfe the right stuff. which is of course, that seminal work about the mercury seven astronauts. so i want to read really couples book to see how she had done it. which is actually a thing that authors do. i wanted to see how she had taken with this story, which we all know, and flipped it around in reverse and told the sort of from the opposite perspective. and so i'm reading this book very closely, on the plane, and

i'm very early in the book. and it mentioned that one of the wives was a private pilot. who had long to fly in an all-female airplane race that has started in the 1920s and head once featured amelia hart. and that's the line that just stopped me because like most of you, i had never heard of air racing i, had never heard of an all-female air race. i never heard of amelia racing anything. i only knew that story that most of us knew. she flew across the ocean, she was the first one to do it. and so because it was 2016, i was able to open my computer, get wi-fi off the plane and google it instantly. and i don't have mostly do that now but in 2016 when you google this race, all i really found was it wikipedia page. and it just listed at the 20 women who had competed in that race. and as a glance at the list, i quickly realized that i only knew to have the names. i knew amelia earhart,

of course. and i knew of a pilot by the name of poncho barnes. because assume you might remember, pardon show is actually a character in the right stuff. she owns the bar by the late 1950s where the fly boys, neil armstrong would go and have drinks after they flew planes out there in the desert. and so by the time i landed in pittsburgh i knew there was something there but i didn't really know much and for a little while i researched it on the internet. and after a short time, i started going to the library. i live in new hampshire in a university town where at least back in those times, the library was open until about three in the morning. and so, after my kids would go to sleep. i would leave home and drive to miles and i would go to the library and i would live in the micro film from august 1929. when i'm looking for a book idea, or

even a story idea. i'm looking at a few things. i'm looking for an interesting world. i'm looking for characters you can root for and root against. and then i'm looking for some kind of arc. some kind of journey. and it became pretty apparent to me, even with those early nights in the library, that there was an interesting world here. and at that point, it was just incumbent upon me to figure out who were those key characters? who did it drive the story forward and what was that are? and that to take a little bit more time. i do remember specifically being in the library, in the middle of the night, no students there. just me at the micro film machine. and i remember stumbling onto that same story of florence klingensmith in

chicago. i didn't find the exact news story at first, i found references to it and i had to sort of figure out what had happened and go find what had happened. when i found that story of florence in chicago and what happened that day and the ramifications of it. i knew what i had a negative really see that story at that moment. but it did take a few months. >> kelly, is there another question back there? go ahead. >> thank you, it was really interesting. i had a really two questions. one is, did any of them have to leave their families or sacrifice their families for their vision? and their spouses must of been pretty special back then to support them because it was probably against whatever was going on back then. >> you hit on something pretty important here. interestingly,

and maybe perhaps not surprisingly, based on what we discussed here tonight. many of these women never married. and those that did, like amelia, did not have children. i think it's plain to me that these women it would've been very intimidating to a man in the early 1930s. they could fly a plane. they could fly a 225 miles an hour in a plane. low to the ground. they could fly over the ocean. that would've been very intimidating to most men. louise did mary. and her husband it was named her faith in and he was a plane builder. not really a pilot, although he did fly. he built planes. and i do think herb is a very interesting character because clearly, he was very modern.

even allowing his wife, louise, to race in 1936 with two children under the age of six right there in the house in arkansas. but a lot of them never married. and you know, i did wonder about that. in particular, with ruth nichols. but it was only after i'd sort of stumbled onto her papers that i realized that she had actually longed to get married for years. and simply could not find a man. >> wonderful talk. friend of mine gave me your book about a year ago knowing that i was doing research on my mom. she got her pilots license in 1937. we're from chicago. she went

from chicago to new york city and became a buyer which back then, for a woman to do that was amazing. she got her pilots license at flushing meadows, it was $1. 60. i have her flight -- dollar 60 lesson. when she saw a load, it made it sounded like it was no big deal. and we know it was. she flew for so long, my question is, she met my dad. prior to meeting my dad, she interviewed with -- all female pilots. she was accepted that. she started with them and then decided she really wanted to be overseas because jacqueline -- strictly on the u.s. flying the men around from base to base. my question is, all these women came from all different parts. mom came from chicago. and i never understood what in -- nor did i ask until it was too late to say, what is it that drove you, gave you the backbone? gave you the nerve to go and get your pilots license. and be able to do things like we have said, men certainly held women back then. and yet,

mom could say is because i wanted to. each of these women sat there, from all over the united states, where did they get the word barnstorming in all these places. what was it that drove these women to have that love of the air? >> so, you know, early on in my research. before i hand really gone deep down the rabbit hole and before ahead of a really written a word. but after i knew i was going to do this book. i did try to answer the question for myself. what did unite them because clearly, demographics wasn't it. i mean, ruth nichols comes for money. florence klingensmith is a farmer's daughter. amelia's comes from a broken home with an alcoholic father. everybody had a different kind of

upbringing. but there were a couple of key things that i think are important. the first is, interestingly, in each of these women's cases, their fathers supported them in this endeavor from a young age. indeed, it was often their fathers who had bought them their first flight. a five dollar flight at a state fair. or a beach on a saturday. for paid for their first flight lesson. so they had their father support. but i think more importantly, and i think more telling for parents and for me as a parent and for all of us is apparent today's from a young age, and i mean from the time these women were little girls. first grade. second grade. they knew at

their core that they were different. amelia wanted to wear her hair short, which was not allowed in her house, and not really acceptable in society in the early 19 20s. and so, she would sneak it by cutting off her hair one inch at a time. louise as mother was this proper southern woman. she wanted to dress louise up and freely white dresses. and, indeed, there are some photographs of her as a young girl in these kind of dresses with a pearl necklace, the kind of photo you would have paid good money for around 1914. louise wanted to wear overalls you like to get dirty. often when she left her house as a young girl in the dress her mother had told her to wear,

she would go to the barn behind her house and change into the clothes that she had left there, and then runoff to play. so, for me as a parent now, i just think about my own kids and kids in general and look at them a little bit differently. because, these women did not know when they were seven or eight or nine or ten years old they want to fly planes. but, they did know they were different, they did know they were unlike the girls sitting next to them in school. that was something that very much drove them their whole lives. >> well, a final thank you to keith for this riveting presentation. another word of thanks to our sponsor tonight, jasper's village. and, many thanks again, goodnight to everyone. >> thank you, thank you.